SHALUM?

For some reason a number of people have in recent weeks sent me the greeting "shalum" which is a bit confusing. "SHALOM" means "peace" but SHILUM means "retribution" so I am not sure if these people are greeting me with a blessing of peace... or a threat of retribution lol.

lolol some really take it so serious to not mis-pronounce but they just do that then out of ignorance. I have no idea why would you pronounce an O as an U, I mean also with an accent lolol will brinson: ferguson said:

Maybe it is a blend of the two such as "be at peace when you get what's coming to you". But let's hope that they simply misspelled SHALOM.

Forgive the late and lengthy reply. I have wanted to extend this message to you about "Shalum" for some time.

I think it is an outgrowth of trendy developments in preferences about pronouncing The Name.

I admit, my reply is merely a aggregate of observations, shot-gunned, as it were, but I think it hits the target.

(Oh yes. Almost forgot ... I am not subscribing to the topics I list, I am just reporting)

The late, beloved Elder Koster's research on pronunciation of The Holy Name, offered several reasons to inflect a second syllable of The Name as "Hu". (He also rejected data that caused his position to lose ground : - )

One evidence is that "hu" appears to be *important* as a standalone syllable. Here's a citation from Koster's Treatise:

(Scholar ParkeTaylor) quotes S. Mowinckel who commented on this: "It can scarcely be denied that hu is here very close to a sort of divine name". After discussing other scholars' remarks, ParkeTaylor states: "The personal pronoun hu is virtually a surrogate for the divine Name". He twice mentions the proposition that ani Hu is an abbreviate of ani YHWH (I am YHWH), which we so often find in the prophets.

The late, beloved elder Koster placed far too much weight on this metaphysical interpretation, and sadly allowed its influence over sound linguistics.

Further evidence from Koster: The TriGram ending for a name is always rendered "Yahu", (IshiYahu, YeremeYahu) and some folk mistakenly assume that the precise "Yahu" sound *must* be maintained for the ThriGram Theophoric in the front, as a prefix. It never occurs to them that letters change their sound when they float around in a word. Especially vowels. E.g., Out-of-hand, they will reject forms like "Yehoshephat", insisting it must be YAHUshephat.

Another item: Elder Koster also places emphasis on transliterations from the Christian era, where it is rendered as *IAOUE* by some, but not all writers. Of course, this doesn't mean Moses or Yahshua said it this way. My evidence (lots of it) shows dialectal variety over the ages. Elder Koster found good data, but it is wrong to assume everyone said it that way at all times and places.

Finally ... and this is probably the biggest influence ... there are several Hebrew Names transcribed from Cuneiform into English by scholars over 100 years ago, from the Murashua Archives. Three (3) of those names have the TriGram Theophoric prefix, and it is always transcribed in a why to suggest (I underscore *suggest*) it sounds like "Yahu" up front. Unfortunately,while some dedicated brethren have glommed onto this data, they probably don't know that the cuneiform spellings are inconsistent, the English transcriptions are inconsistent and that fact alone speaks to dialectal variety. What is even worse, Cuneiform only allows for the 3 basic vowels of classical Arabic /ee/, /oo/, /ah/ plus an e-vowel, whose value is uncertain. Look for Dr. Erica Reiner "How we read Cuneiform texts" (jstor.org) and she rails against the use of cuneiform for precise phonemic indication. The O-Vowel is still lacking in cuneiform transcriptions after all these years, and the transcriptions from which brethren are making their claims are over 100 years old. This means that the "O" sound in the prefix of Theophoric names cannot be ruled out using Cuneiform. Even worse, it was written by a bunch of pagans 600 miles east of the Holy Land, in a language understood far less than Hebrew. Its four(4) elusive vowels have been wrongly summoned to correct Hebrew, about which we know far more.

In aggregate, this dodgy data conveys to certain dedicated brethren a body of evidence, that compels them to render Yodth-heh-Wav as "Yahu" in all places. Both Theophoric Names and The Most Holy Name as well.

I know it has taken me several paragraphs to get this far, but ... the impact of those conclusions is that the Wav is rendered as /oo/ everywhere. They project that "u" sound everywhere, assuming that the letter has one and only one sound.

Thus, Shalom becomes "Shalum".

I have come to resent the groundless theories floating among our ranks, that each letter has one and only one sound, and that these names have one and only one sound. A broader study will show that, while the Bible clearly, most clearly, teaches transliteration, it also conveys dialectal variety.

Sure, I can accept and celebrate the form "Yahuah". No problem. But when they blaspheme other acceptable forms, they create a presumptuous sin for themselves. And when they project the /oo/ vowel into all instances of the Wav, they start to look silly.

That's what I think is going on. Mickey Mouse linguistics at its worst, as if Hebrew Linguistics is built-up one letter at a time.